Scarf*oo

Like every trade needs its set of tools, so do we web developers. In this article I’ll present you – what in my experience are – the best web development applications available on Mac OS X.

Graphics Manipulation

The king of all graphic manipulation apps is Adobe Photoshop ($699 or $49/month). Its performance and features are simply way above anything else, but so is its price. If you can afford to buy it, definitely go for it, else there are some alternatives – much less powerful – but way easier on your wallet:

• Pixelmator ($23.99)
• Acorn ($49.99)
• The Gimp (free)

Also if you have Photoshop and you don’t do a lot of line art, you might probably do without Adobe Illustrator. I rarely use it by itself, but sometimes I use it for more complex vector art and conversion in conjunction with Photoshop.

File Transfer

Transmit ($34) – Probably the best commercial FTP application on the Mac.
Cyberduck (free) – A great alternative to Transmit, featuring a single-pane interface.

Text Editing

If Photoshop is the king of graphics manipulation, then Macromates’ TextMate is the king of text editing. Once you start using it, all other text editors look like toys. The features of this editor are simply to many to list here, so feel free to browse the product’s web site for more info.

Database Access And Manipulation

If you need to access (mysql) databases, you need a good tool to manage it. Navicat is just that. It is however, a bit expensive, and there are other free tools that do the job quite as well:

• Sequel Pro (free) – a fast and easy-to-use Mac database management application for working with MySQL databases.
• Querious ($29) – a native OS X application supporting viewing, searching, editing, importing, exporting, and structuring your MySQL databases.

Browsers & Plugins

My main development browser is Mozilla Firefox with the following plugins:

• Web developer toolbar – a toolbar that has it all
• Firebug – a great html/css debugging tool with live preview of changes
• ColorZilla – a color picker tool
• YSlow – a web page performance analyzer

For your IE debugging needs, you should probably go for a virtual machine that runs a version of windows with IE. I recommend spending your money on VMware Fusion ($79.99 – $99.99) or Parallels Desktop and install Windows XP, which comes preloaded with internet explorer version 6. You can then have separate installations with various other browser versions and run them as needed.

It was a pleasantly unexpected surprise to see that my favourite browser just got much better, more polished, and I must say, fancier too.

Safari version 4 sports new Chromesque tabs on the top of the window, a smart google-powered address field, a sexy coverflow history viewer and an even sexier favourites ‘Top Sites’ view.

This is a really nice upgrade to the ol’ and dull version 3. Get your beta version from apple’s website here.

WebKit, the development version of Apple’s Safari web browser now supports another advanced CSS feature, which keeps blowing it way ahead of the competition…

Competition?

For more info on the subject, visit Surfin’ Safari Blog.

It seems webkit is the first one to obtain a 100/100 mark on the Acid3 test. They claim it passes the test, albeit they haven’t beat the smoothness animation test yet. Read more on the r31342 nightly build that passed the test here. You can get the latest nightly build here, if you are interested to test the thing, or if you simply want to be on the edge.

Apple released an update to the Safari browser today, bringing the version number to 3.1. The new release includes support for CSS3 web fonts, CSS transforms and transitions, support for the new video and audio HTML 5 elements, and support for SQL database offline storage of web apps. The update also seems to increase javascript performance, site compatibility (time for the Acid 3 test, folks?) and improve stability.
Finally web developers can easily turn on a Develop menu with various tools of the trade. Now you can access the Web Inspector, the Network Timeline, and you can edit CSS in the Web Inspector as well.

More detailed information on this update is available on this website, and security details of the update are available here.

Happy browsing!